Burqa bans unveil a debate

A GROWING movement to ban burqas and niqabs, the face coverings worn by some Muslim women, is igniting a debate over individual religious freedom versus broader cultural values.

While there have been calls in New South Wales to consider bans, in Europe it is already fact.

It started in Belgium when a bill making it a crime to wear a face veil in public passed unanimously in the lower house of parliament in April.

The penalty would be a fine of up to 25 euros or a week in jail.

France followed and MPs across the continent are considering similar measures.

Belgium already has a law that forbids wearing masks in public, but lawmakers said they wanted to enhance the security of the country, promote gender equality and send a signal to extremists.

“Above all, this law was based around the question of security,” Denis Ducarme, the co-author of the legislation, says.

“We think that it is important that all people must be able to be identified when in public. But we are also concerned over women forced to wear (a burqa or niqab).

“If the state doesn’t say ‘stop’, the few wearing them today might be 2000 in 10 years.”

The Muslim Executive of Belgium, an association of Muslims, estimates that between 30 and 100 women there wear a burqa.

In France, fewer than 2000 cover their faces, according to the Interior Ministry.

Ducarme says lawmakers are not concerned about Muslims in general but about the minority who hold extremist views.

Anthropologist Ruth Mandel, of University College London, the author of Cosmopolitan Anxieties, says the proposed bans are a stand-in for a deeper concern. The veils are a symbol, she says, “touchstones for more substantial debates on whether and how those still seen as outsiders fit into mainstream European society”.

Many countries, including France, Belgium and Germany, restrict head scarves and face-covering veils for government employees and in state schools.

In France, which has Europe’s largest Muslim population – an estimated 7% to 10% of its 64 million people – the Cabinet approved a ban on face-covering veils in public areas in May.

The legislation, to be considered by the National Assembly in July, could mean a fine of 148 euros and a citizenship class requirement. Someone convicted of forcing a woman to wear a burqa or niqab faces up to 14,813 euros in penalties and a year in prison.

“There are extremist gurus out there and we must stop their influence and barbaric ideologies,” says Community Party lawmaker Andre Gerin.

France banned all religious symbols, including head scarves, from public classrooms and buildings in 2004.

The draft law states that the French republic’s founding values of liberty, equality and fraternity are at stake – that a face covering undermines a woman’s liberty by keeping her separate from society, violates fraternity by excluding others because it hides her face, and undermines gender equality by keeping women in an unequal position.

The proposal is popular in France – a poll in the weekly Le Point in January showed public support at 57% – but criticism is mounting.

The Roman Catholic Church opposes a ban, saying it places Christians in Muslim countries at risk of retaliation.

Isabelle Praile, of the Muslim Executive of Belgium, says politicians “are using these women for their own political ends”. “Those imposing this ban are guilty of the same extremism as those forcing women to veil themselves,” Praile says.